Riding the wave of solar energy

Sunday

Jun 15, 2014 at 8:00 PM

If you have ever gone surfing, you know that timing is everything. If you stand on your board at the right moment, if you catch the perfect wave as it builds to its crescendo, then you will be rewarded with a long, exhilarating ride. If not, you’ll be left far behind, dead in the water.

The same applies to good government.

In three major policy areas — health care, education, and energy — Massachusetts anticipated the next wave of opportunity, prepared for it, and then caught the breaker at exactly the right time.

Several years before Obamacare, Massachusetts reformed not only its health care system, but the medical payment system as well. As a result, Massachusetts has slowed the exorbitant health insurance rate hikes that we experienced almost a decade ago.

In elementary and secondary education, Massachusetts reformed its public schools curriculum in 1993, eight years before the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Today, Massachusetts test scores are among the highest in the country. Just as in health care, the national education reform initiatives mirrored those of Massachusetts.

Now consider energy. Massachusetts was one of the first states in the nation to require a certain percentage of its electricity to come from renewable energy.

So when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced earlier this month that it would require states to significantly cut carbon emissions from existing power plants, it was merely asking the rest of the nation to copy Massachusetts’ successes.

After all, the Bay State, which is part of a regional emissions cap-and-trade program and has passed laws to decrease the use of fossil fuels, is already 40 percent below its 1990 greenhouse gas emissions in the power sector, said David Cash, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection.

A national program to reduce emissions will likely drive more states into cap-and-trade markets like the one Massachusetts participates in, helping to reduce costs for everybody, Cash said.

And to those who say reducing carbon emissions will hurt the economy, consider the Massachusetts example. “Our gross state product has increased by 70 percent,” Cash said about the rise in the state’s economic output since 1990.

Modeling for the regional cap-and-trade program initially predicted a 1 to 2 percent increase in electricity prices, but prices have actually dropped by 8 percent, Cash said. While declines in electricity prices in the U.S. have been tied to natural gas prices, the Patrick administration has been pushing alternatives to fossil fuel, including wind and solar energy.

Among the state’s greatest successes is a rapid increase in solar energy from almost zero in 2002 to 518 megawatts today. Solar projects have sprouted on rooftops and capped landfills.

According to the 2013 Massachusetts Clean Energy Industry Report, solar constitutes about 60 percent of the renewable energy sector in the state, compared with about 10 percent for wind and 13 percent for hydropower.

The Solar Energy Industries Association recently included Massachusetts in its list of top-10 solar states. Through the instillation of new solar panels, Massachusetts was ranked fourth nationally for its 237.2 megawatt-increase in capacity in 2013.

Other states, especially those still kicking and screaming about Obamacare and strict environmental regulation, should take note that all of Massachusetts’ successes in health care, education and energy developed over the administrations of Republican and Democratic governors.